LITMIR.BIZ

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one hand tighter over his mouth and wave away the room with the other, begging to be ignored.

      “I love pot but some people it just makes stupid,” Shady said. Instantly this shut him up somehow.

      Mister Greuel fiddled with his headlight. He turned it one way and then another, often staring into the beam below his chin. By now Spunk had removed his shirt entirely and held it wadded against his eyes. He mumbled the word stitches and his father mumbled back that such could be found in a kitchen drawer. Spunk brought away the shirt and looked at the blood spattered there, pressed it to his brow again. This was not a cheap article of clothing, he complained. I bought this at—he couldn’t remember. Then he yawned, resigned to the ruined fact of it.

      “A lot of blood in the human face,” Shady said.

      “I thought you knew everything,” Cole said to Greuel. “I thought you never let a man drive a harvest alone.”

      Greuel passed his headlight over the walls and ceiling. He said there had been complications with this run, his tailer had another item of business to take care of on the way back, they’d done it before in a pinch and never had any difficulties. “But you don’t need to know my problems,” he added. Again Spunk reasoned that Fleece was fine and probably fixed up with some tail—he excused himself to Shady from beneath the bloodied shirt—and was cooling it easy in his seminary digs.

      “I’d like to think if he’s in this county he would have sense enough to bring me my money or my goods or else have a damn good reason to be walking around. A man has standards to keep, a reputation to uphold.”

      At this Greuel appeared to fall into pensive rumination, gazing absently as the shape of the room changed with the movement of his hand. Dark veils swung opposite the wash of light and the whole room swayed; shadows dipped forward to listen in, leapt back. By now Cole’s eyes felt swollen and gritty, and it seemed he could note each half-thought as it rose and floated away without his grasping it. Perhaps that was why he felt so naked and unprepared when Greuel stilled the light fully upon him.

      Events have a way of fooling, the man said. You’re in it and you think they’re one way but turns out they were steadfastly another. There’s always what’s happening below what seems to be happening. It’s enough to drive a man batshit crazy. You have to ask questions, you have to ask why you ask the questions you ask, it just goes on and on. And every time, the questions take you where you don’t want to go. Every freaking time.

      “I have no idea what you are saying to me,” admitted Cole. Greuel dismissed him from behind Shady again. He smacked his lips as though he did not like the taste in his mouth.

      “You kids get out of here. Why not show some loyalty to the old man who takes such care of you? Get out to that old place and see what sign of Fleece you can rustle up before I forget him.” Another raspberry cough erupted then, along with another squeeze to Shady’s thigh that went unremarked by her and set Cole to cringing. “Get off me hon, I got pills to take. And son don’t you take any more that reefer, I’m short in the pocket as of right this now.”

      Shady staggered up as Greuel struggled to rise, using the beveled edge of the table for stability. It had not been so long since Cole had seen him last but he could tell the man had much declined. Whatever illness that was at him had managed a great deal of work over the past several months.

      From the hallway Mister Greuel bid farewell as though already his emissaries were a long distance off on their journey, and the bacon-fat teeth unveiled themselves again. With that simple gesture, any hope Cole had with Shady this night was effectively over. Spunk stood waiting outside the door in his bloody T-shirt, holding up a snagged dime bag he shook at Shady with glee. All three glided out and over the porch and through the littered yard, Spunk slithering, skeletal, and cackling in the lead.

      The first cop to show nods at Dwayne Hardesty and stands beside him at the feet of four kids who lie spread-eagled face-down on the muddy portico steps leading to the graffiti-strewn boards that shield the seminary entrance. The wash of the cruiser’s spot frescoes their captive forms in hard outline, three underfed and thin and the fourth a fat block squeezed into a Kentucky basketball sweatshirt that strains to withstand his heavy nervous breathing, the grommets in their jeans and an occasional earring flashing agleam in the white light; four pairs of white sneakers, expensive and rain-wet, shine stark and severe and unworldly. The caretaker always struggles to prevent himself from gloating too much over this aspect of his job.

      “I count four,” the cop says low, to Hardesty’s shoulder.

      “Yep, four’s where I stop at too.”

      “Thought you called in five?”

      “The one run off before I got these down. You might hear word later.”

      “I should check emergency rooms.”

      “You maybe get something out of that, yeah.”

      “Wish you wouldn’t send these kids to the hospital, Mr. Hardesty. I understand your duty but these are just teenagers out here and you’re likely to brand them for life. Kind of a hard cost for a boy out looking for kicks.”

      Hardesty turns from the cop and spits. The thick saliva smacks onto the pavement in a heavy gel that holds its shape until the pattering rain thins the dark phlegm and a yellow strip breaks loose, drains the wad empty. His small rangy hound scoots among the line of captives, shivering under thin brown fur soaked to a fine sheen. Her whirligig tail throws a sparkling spray in the cast of cruiser light that’s fairly pretty to see.

      “Get over here, Bone.”

      Howls erupt from on high and deep inside the building, yaps and snarls muddling together from one of the floors directly above. The dog raises from where she had her nose in the ear of one boy who dared not turn away and whines a squeaky whine. She puts her nose to him again, and again Hardesty commands her to come. This time she appears to almost nod in agreement—as though to admit her master is of course reasonable and right despite her urge to do differently—and she springs over the boy’s head into the next space over, the throaty whine rising again almost to a drone. She looks up at Hardesty and then back at the kids on their bellies, and then huffs an exasperated complaint. Hardesty speaks her name again, hard. She lowers her chin to her forepaws and the tail slows in waves to a shy, low, wary swing.

      “I give him a brush to think about is all. He aint going to die.”

      “Salt shot?”

      “Gets you the bird without messing the feathers.”

      “Damn that has got to burn like hell.”

      “Wouldn’t know, myself. I make it a point to be on the right end of the gun.”

      Hardesty chins his collarbone. He has yet to look this cop in the face, instead surveying his bounty stilled and silent on the ground, the set of each head indicating they are listening with complete and utter attention to the low voices of the two men. He has to remind himself he is performing a duty and is in his rights; usually around police Hardesty’s more nervous than they are right now. This fact irritates him no end.

      “Well, wish you wouldn’t do it.”

      “You want me to walk you through this building it is my job to protect and show what these kids come here to do? There is no mercy for vandals. It is 455 in the A.D. and the sack of Rome in there. I don’t like midnight work anymor’n you, my living room is warm and dry. I give them a warning shot. Sometimes a kid runs right into it.”

      The officer tilts his head to greet a colleague who has parked her cruiser by the empty stone fountain in the center of the circular drive, the engine running with the high beams left on. The rain flashes tinsel threads that emerge and disappear in the same instant like the very air is woven from some magical fabric.

      Hardesty does not acknowledge the second cop at all. He has nothing against equality but does not believe in women in positions of physical authority. A figure of authority should be able to display

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